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Beating Heart, Dancing Feet

Still Life with Stop Light (Light Upon Itself)


I was driving to a movie once, alone
in the City of Angels, when the light changed
and I sat at a stop light long enough
to behold a deeply personal moment
of a rather odd and very impersonal nature.
This only added to the growing sense of doubt
I then had about the true nature of things.
The light changed and I drove to the theater—
a grandiose version of a life now passed—
very disturbed and finally sitting alone
in the thread-bare dark, shaken, unable to connect,
blinking the lone wink from a darkened balcony.
And that was it.  That was all there was.

Why such a thing would happen to me
on a weeknight in spring on Santa Monica Boulevard,
I didn't know.  I was in the habit at that time
of seeing a movie alone, weeknights after work
at a theater not far from home.  Single,
unattached, living the disparate life, I was
twenty-five, desperate, desirable, desperate
to be desired—unsure if the root cause was my mind,
insight, or a lack of sexual activity; I don't remember
the movie I saw that night, or who it's stars were
and what they could or could not accomplish.
It was something that happened while I was broken
at heart and all I remember is the light turned
red and I brought the car to a stop
out of habit, out of mind, fully empty of emotion
as some arcane thing moved slowly across
the crosswalk, alien, unkind, immense, and also alone;
there was no one singing, no one raising a horn.



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Collected Poetry

Beating Heart, Dancing Feet

Still Life with Stop Light (Light Upon Itself)